“He left my office then with an unsteady step, and I did not see him any more that day. Another source of trouble now began to lower in my pathway. Coming from an unexpected direction, so far as it affected me individually, it was greater than any I had ever before experienced. Trouble divested of mystery may be endured, but when it takes us by surprise, and we feel the blow, but know not who dealt it, it is somewhat hard to bear. Such was the blow that fell on me. I could feel it, but couldn’t see it. An impenetrable cloud of mystery began to gather around me, mixing itself up with all matters in which I was interested. Something near two hundred yards east of Mr. Rockland’s residence, and on the same side of the street, was a small, two-story brick dwelling-house, situated in the middle of a small inclosure, containing, I suppose, about a quarter of an acre of ground. The plot of land was inclosed with pine plank, not over three and a half feet high. That part of the lot which lay in front of the house, constituting the front yard, was thickly set with short, untrimmed shrubbery, while the other had been used as a vegetable garden. There were only four rooms in the house, two in the lower and two in the upper story, and a narrow hall separated the two lower rooms; a pair of steep stairs commenced on the lower floor near the door and ended on the back side of the house, on the upper floor. The building itself stood in a low, flat place, surrounded with rising ground on all sides, and particularly in the rear, where a tall bluff rose up fully as high as the top of the house. The low, marshy ground where the building was located, and the unsightly surroundings, rendered it very undesirable as a residence; I suppose it was owing to this fact that it was most of the time unoccupied. There were no locks to the doors, and the house had for a long time been uninhabited, save by some lonely tramp who now and then sought a night’s lodging in it.